Rifts: Age of Atlantis

[Incriptus]

Just day dreaming about a book describing the Earth during the time of Atlantis

After scouring my books I can't find an actual date for the Great Disaster ... I want to say either 14,000 BC is stuck in my head but I can't find any evidence. . .

Anyways we know that there was Atlantis spending its time dimensional traveling and ignoring much of its own world.
The Leumarians were active at the same time and were friendly
The original Nazca were active

It took 2000 years after the disaster for Atlantis proper to disappear.
During which time they were fighting the supernatural monsters that came from the Mega Rift

----

Any one have any interesting Age of Atlantis facts?

[Braden Campbell]

According to Plato, the sinking of Atlantis took place nearly 9000 years ago... which would put it in 9564 BC. The Pandora Disaster can thus be dated to 11, 564 BC (which is interesting, because a small ice age, called the Younger-Dryas Period begins about the same time... coincidence?)

[glitterboy2098]

honestly, read the works of Robert E Howard and you'll probably get a good idea of how most of the world was. toss in the Akallabêth from the Silmarillion as well. (the rise and fall of Númenor was intentionally an Atlatean expy)

[Curbludgeon]

(These ain't so much facts as shootin' the breeze.)

I'd be inclined to add another faction or two to pre-historic Earth, and perhaps add a little to those currently present. I think there could stand to be a psychically focused group, and probably a monster kingdom. For the latter I'd maybe just do an expy of At the Mountains of Madness. Since all listed groups have pyramids, I think that would be the unifying factor, but which each faction approaches differently.

Atlantis and Lemuria are both pretty well defined, but the Nazca could use some love. Given the previous two groups aren't described as being particularly religious it makes sense to lean into that a bit. Their pyramids should be focused on different effects than A. or L., as an example. Line magic would also need a shot in the arm. As a first pass, I'd say swipe much of the geomantic stuff from Mystic China, and crib some effects from Diabolism. The culture's main magic classes could then be an expanded Line Maker, Priests with training in wards, Stone Masters, Servants of the Gods lying somewhere between True Inca and Witches, and maybe Air-Water Warlocks with Rainmaker spells.

Considering lost continents and mythical locations, I'm afraid that while I'd like to use Thule or Hyperborea as other Hellenic fictional lands, their subsequent associations with esoteric neo-Nazism have left them tainted. While the notion of Vril, and its use by subterranean peoples has also been unfortunately coopted, much like Lemuria it was adopted by Theosophy. I feel there's a certain assonance thereby from which to draw, and obliquely reference the dismissed above in the bargain. Perhaps most easily it could be incorporated into the Hollow-Earth conception of the city Agartha, while not actually making Earth hollow. Here's a sketch of a group whose major abilities are Phase Powers, Summoning, Fire/Earth warlocks with Temporal spells. and psychic variants of technowizardry and stone magic.

Spoiler:

Located below Tibet, Agartha is depicted as a series of caverns populated by asuras. A possible source of such is the time and space hopping city Hiranyapura, mentioned in Pantheons of the Multiverse. In the Vedic religion many of the asura fled underground upon the defeat of the city by the devatas during the Golden Age, which would be a couple of million years ago. For this purpose let's call it ~14,000 ya.

Vril is described as all "all-pervading fluid" with which destructive, healing, and mesmeric effects can be derived via force of will and focusing staves. With the electricity generated by such, the variant human Vril-ya created a technologically advanced underground civilization. This sounds much like a psychic race, with elements of the Amaki Gizmoteer, Stone Master, and Zapper.

My pitch is that the Vril-ya were underground first, having used their limited psychic variant of Stone Magic to create vast stable caverns protected from the surrounding mantle, through whose empty space Vril could be more easily gathered. Upon coming into contact with the displaced daityas they were conquered due to their general lack of magical knowledge. Using summoning circles to produce more tractable slaves, the daityas took advantage of what little time and dimensional magic they could use outside the limits of their city, converting the Vril-ya non-pyramid into a transmitter in order to make contact with Hiranyapura. The floating city was at that point several thousand years in the future, in the midst of the battle with the Hindu gods mentioned in CB2. The level of ambient Vril interacted catastrophically with the temporal energies focused in the void pyramid, and the whole city shunted out of phase with the rest of the planet, leaving everyone and thing intangible. Shortly thereafter, a series of earthquakes collapsed the caverns.

Being unable to fight each other, the daityas and vril-ya were at a stalemate for a century, during which time the humans focused their efforts onto three goals. They needed to be able to shift into phase again, they needed a space in which to do so, and they needed to stop the daityas from doing so before they did. The initial collapse of the Agartha void pyramid attracted the attention of some elementals, with which the Vril-ya made psychic contact, which eventually led to contacting an Elemental Intelligence to whom many swore allegiance. Others used Total Recall to remember the glimpses they caught of the daityas' protective circles, and prepared to telekinetically construct them when the time was right. Once one person learned how to psionically make themselves solid within a space created by a fledgling Warlock, things accelerated. The daityas were quickly defeated; some forced to come out of phase in the middle of viscous, searing rock, while others were trapped within summoning circles. Rather than crush their foes, the Vril-ya released their hold and proposed they instead work together to mutual benefit. Planning to eventually betray the humans, the daityas accepted.

The combination of psychic stone manipulation and Warlock magic allowed the Vril-ya to quickly reconstruct the Agarthan Void-Pyramid. The daityas were unable to contact Hiranyapura, not knowing to where or when they had fled upon their crushing defeat. Feeling their position had become untenable, the daityas came to legitimately accept the terms of the truce which had been extended to them, sharing their understanding of minor temporal magic and summoning. The combined Agarthan forces expanded, creating a second underground city in a place of strong Vril, under the North Pole.

After the fall of Atlantis I'm thinking the Agarthans finally made contact with Hiranyapura and were whisked away. Maybe instead they were too arrogant to believe their powers were failing and they all died trapped beneath the surface.

[Incriptus]

If one is inclined to include Dark Conversions the Nightlords/Ba'al would have ruled a civilization at about the same time as the fall of Atlantis ...

[Braden Campbell]

I should also like to add that very old Atlanteans (about 1% IIRC) who survived the sinking, might carry animal tattoos of creatures now long extinct, such as dire wolves, mammoths, and sabre-tooth tigers.

[Incriptus]

Non-Canon thought

To make a good pre-history society we need an excuse to not leave behind evidence - Sinking of Atlantis or Nazca making their buildings from magic -

So perhaps a society of psychics who's society was half astral, and earthly tools were ectoplasma ... [proto-psyscape] ...

"go big or go home" - This psychic society was the seeds for all psionic human beings?

[glitterboy2098]

Non-Canon thought

To make a good pre-history society we need an excuse to not leave behind evidence - Sinking of Atlantis or Nazca making their buildings from magic -

So perhaps a society of psychics who's society was half astral, and earthly tools were ectoplasma ... [proto-psyscape] ...

the ancestors of the Psionic Immortals perhaps. (from Mercenaries. one of them is part of the demonbusters command staff.. unofficially)


and i'd say that the lack of evidence thing does not require extreme excuses.. there are plenty of places on earth that are poorly explored in general, much less examined archeologically, which before the end of the ice age would have been rather more habitable. Central Africa, the Amazon jungle, etc.

and given that rise in sea level at the end of the ice age there are plenty of places along the coasts that could have had civilizations, which no one could detect today because they are under several hundred feet of water and thousands of years of silt... heck, back then England and europe were connected by dry land!. and there are plenty of places
around the world where similar expanses of dry land would have existed then, but are drowned now.

[Curbludgeon]

I was attempting to straddle those two possibilities in the above, where the lack of any evidence in the underground civilization is a combination of being formerly located below a volcanic plain known for tremendous earthquakes, as well as the people having a historical tradition of intangibility. Since the Agarthans are 110% intended as bad guys, and the Atlanteans are strongly focused on dimensional travel, I figured the Astral Plane was better left for something else.

I like the idea of the Ba'al having a city, with their newfound allegiance to the dark gaining them access to dimensions (nightlands/dream/mirror) of which Atlantis is ignorant. Given where it would have been in pre-Sumeria, and that space is a field of exploration none of the other factions are especially interested in, there's potential for a fun twist on ancient astronauts.

[RockJock]

I love the idea of an Atlantean with a Dire Wolf, Smiledon, Cave Bear etc.

Red Giants in South America were also around, if my memory serves me right.

[glitterboy2098]

yeah, there were a number of non-human races we've been told were around.. the Pucara (the red giants RockJock mentioned), the Agogwe, the Sasquatch, the Rahumen, etc. many of which continued to live on earth after atlantis vanished, albeit in far more remote and hidden areas.

another suggestion.. the atlantean incident is firmly in the mesolithic, and we have a lot of examples of tribal cultures from that era, from all over the world. it might be wise to look into some of those from the areas you would like to stick these prehistoric superpowers, and get a feel forwhat kind of stone age tribal cultures were present at or right after the atlantean disaster. it is likely that the magic/Psi civilizations had relations with their more tribal neighbors.. or that some of the cultures from afterwards were or included refugees from the lost civilization, having to adapt to the stone-age lifestyle.
there is also the possibility that some of those cultures (especially the ones where we have found no remains, just their tools/pots/etc) might not have bee as human as we assume.. a tribe of werecreatures for example might generate a fair amount of stoneage tools and artifacts without ever leaving evidence they were not just some early human culture.

[Braden Campbell]

Since I was not the one who initiated this thread, i feel safe in saying that I actually began preparing the ground for a supplement/settling that would take place during this exact time period (ie. the 2000 year period between Pandora and the Sinking).

So... we're talking about the world 13,000 years ago. That means that it's getting colder (Canada and much of Europe are ice covered), species are extincting, and aside from Atlantis and a tiny handful of others, human beings are at the level of the Stone Age. As well, the magic level has dropped considerably: I made everything SDC and put the ley lines at Palladium Fantasy levels. This in turn means that the dimensional empire is all but dead - many worlds are now inaccessible because there's not enough PPE any more. Many of the Atlanteans other-worldly allies are leaving...

... and then, there's a succession crisis.

[RockJock]

Love it Braden.

[Incriptus]

which before the end of the ice age

I am also loving the concept of a society who manipulated ice with magic/psionics. Ice Age ended, all evidence of their great castles and tools and civilization melted away.

[glitterboy2098]

actually i'd combine the psionic/astral thing with the ice.. have an entire civilization that existed in Astral Pockets, with the physical entrances being on the glacial flows.. would give it some degree of protection from invasion, and would obviously leave no major signs of cities or outposts, because when atlantis ruined the ley lines, the connections to the astral pockets got cut..

[Incriptus]

Rifts® Antarctica and its many mysteries and secrets. Includes the Ice Witch, Icecraft, Ice Magic, the War of the Elementals, possessed volcanoes, ghost camps, the Krellik threat, Splugorth, aliens, demons, monsters, cold weather rules and more

Guess I'd have to adapt that to my Northern Glacier society